Beach Beauty: Calico Toes

Painted myself some über cute toes yesterday. Calico to be exact. Love ‘em.

I found this tutorial for your fingers, but thought it would last longer, be easier to do, and be pretty dang cute on those l’il piggies.

DIY Calico Toes:

1. Paint toes light blue

2. On a piece of plastic or cardboard, put a small blob of light pink and bright pint polish next to each other so they touch.

3. Dip a homemade dotting tool in the middle of the 2 light polishes (this creates the 2 toned flower effect) and make flowers by clumping 3-5 dots together.

4. Using a tooth pick or nail art brush, paint some thin green lines for leaves.

5. Done. Perfectly pretty springtime toes that will cause you to not wear a closed toed shoe for at least 2 weeks.

Polish Used: China Glaze Hop Top Blue, 4Free by Mary Jo Matsumoto Floating Lotus, Essie Fiji and Sally Hansen Lickety Lime split.


Beach Beauty: Strawberry Toes

My 3 year old niece, Ella, was the guinea pig for the latest DIY Pedicure. She wanted Strawberry toes, so I was going to give them to her no matter what. So if anyone has a little daughter, cousin, niece or friend who can sit still, this is the cutest little pedicure ever.

It also looks great on adult toes. In case you want to try it out.

DIY Strawberry Toes:

1. Paint base coat.

2. Paint toes a bright deep strawberry pink color.

3. Using a white nail art brush, in the center of each toe, by the base of the nail, paint three skinny triangles that connect at the base, to make the strawberry leaves.

4. Paint over the white with a bright green nail polish (if you can find a nail art brush that will work best.) By doing white first, the green will be much brighter.

5. Using either a black or yellow polish and dotting tool, paint a few tiny dots on each toe for the strawberry seeds.

6. Let polish dry completely, then cover with glossy topcoat.

Eat your heart out Strawberry Shortcake.

Beach Beauty: Supa Dupa Butterfly Toes

As the great Poet, Missy Elliott, once said: “Me I’m supa fly (uh-huh), Supa dupa fly (uh-huh), Supa dupa fly.”

Ok well, I’m not supa fly at all, but my toes are. They look like Monarch butterfly wings, which served as great inspiration for an easy and impressive DIY Pedicure.

Here’s how to get some Supa Dupa Fly toes, in the Monarch sense.

1: Paint toes with a basecoat

2: Paint toes with 2 coats of a very fun, almost onoxiously bright color.

3: Using black nail art polish brush, paint a swipe across the upper inner corner of each toe. Then fill that corner in, this will make a black triangle tip on each nail corner.

4: Still using the black nail art polish, draw 3 lines (big toe) or 2 lines (other toes) that connect the other side of your toe to the black triangle corner.

5: Still using the black nail art polish, curve the area where the line and the black corner intersect, so there now are no straight edges. This makes the black look like the curve pattern of the wings instead of straight edges.

6: Using either white nail art or white polish and a homemade dotting tool, paint dots randomly in the black tip area.

7: Let polish dry then apply a top coat.

8: Watch the video tutorial because I most likely made no sense.

9: Move your toes around as fast as you can and see if they flutter.

Polish used: Illamasqua: Jo’Mina  Milani nail art laquer

Time spent. About 8 minutes, no joke. (not including drying time)

Beach Beauty: Cow Print Toes

When it comes to toes, we always go exotic: Cheetah, Snake, Zebra, Tiger, Himalayan Snow Leopard. Now it’s time we show Old MacDonald and his farm some love with some Cow print toes. Hey, if D&G and Michael Kors use it, I think this print is e-i-e-i-oh-so pedicure worthy. The best part, it’s insanely easy to do and turns out rather chic yet adorable.

So mooooooove on over Bessie, it’s time for some beach bums to have some udderly cool l’il piggies.

How to have cow print toes:

1. Paint a base coat.

2. Paint 2 coats of white or really light opaque pink nail polish.

3. Using a black nail art brush/pen (or a toothpick with black polish), paint on the cow print. Hint it’s just a bunch of asymmetrical blobs with maybe a little small dot on the big toe. (Watch how this gal does it on her nails at :32)

4. Let polish completely dry, then apply topcoat.

5. Go grab a partner and do the cotton-eyed-joe. Barefoot.

Polish I used: Essie: Fiji & Milani Nail Art: Black Sketch

Beach Beauty: Tiger Stripe Toes.

It’s time to make your little piggies roar…

I love animal prints, yet rarely wear them (kudos to people who can pull them off) - but somehow they look pretty darn cool on toes - no matter the color combo. So, I decided to figure out how to make that happen, and am thrilled to tell you how easy it is to paint some Jungle Book worthy toes.

Step 1: At your local drug store, buy one of the new nail art nail polishes in the color you want your stripes. I used Milani Nail Art Laquer (cost: $3.99) but LA colors and Sally Hansen also make some.

Step 2: Paint your toes as you normally would in your color of choice

Step 3: Using your newly acquired nail art nail polish,  paint 3-4 stripes on each toe alternating on each side (Tip: apply more pressure on the outside of your toe then decreasing the pressure as you paint the stroke to the inside to get the thin to thick line effect.)

Step 4: Repeat on all toes you want, let dry then cover with a top coat.

Step 5: Try not to marvel too much at how fun but simple your toes look & make sure to add the Jungle Book to your Netflix queue.

Polish used in the pic: Purple: Illamasqua- Jo’mina Black: Milani - Black Sketch